Child Sexual Assault, Disability and the Justice System Forum
Child Sexual Assault, Disability and the Justice System Forum
MEREDITH LEA: Thank you all for coming today. I would like to welcome you to the forum, co-hosted by People with Disability Australia, Senator Clare Moore, Senator Rachel Siewert and Senator Joanna Lindgren. We would like to thank the senators for co-hosting and for assisting us in preparation of the forum.
I would also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we are meeting on today, the Ngunnawal people, and I pay my respects to Elders past and present. I would also like to acknowledge and welcome any other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who are here today.
I would also like to introduce Craig Wallace who will be emceeing today’s proceedings. Craig Wallace is the President of People with Disability Australia. He is currently working for People with Disabilities ACT, and is passionate about information freedom, disability rights and direct democracy. He has co-authored an approach called Know Before You Go, which works to build the confidence of people with disability and providers in community access.
Craig has contributed to the NDIS Expert Panel for the ACT and has been included as a member of the Advisory Board for the ACT Business Leaders, Innovative, Thoughts and Solutions. He has been published in the Australian, Fairfax Online, Open Forum and The Australian Financial Review. He has also chaired a community housing provider, headed a Ministerial Council on disability and sat as a member of the ABC advisory council for four years.
In 2003, Craig was awarded a Centenary Medal in the Australian Honours List for service to the community and has featured in the Australia Day awards four times for early work on the National Disability Strategy and the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Craig, thanks so much for emceeing today's forum.
CRAIG WALLACE: Thank you very much Meredith. I would like to welcome everyone to this event and to Parliament House. I’d also like to acknowledge that we are meeting on the lands of Indigenous people and that we respect their Elders. We have a number of apologies. It's not my practice to read through 20 apologies at the start of an event, but suffice to say, it's an indication of the interest that has been shown across the aisle by Parliamentarians during a busy sitting week, that they have indicated they would like to be here despite being detained by other business.
Some housekeeping. We do have a busy morning, but please feel free to top up your coffee or tea as we move forward. We also, as you would note, have captions going. So please say your name when speaking and we would ask that people not talk over each other, just so that the captioning can move forward seamlessly. We are meeting at Parliament House, and while that venue has advantages, it also means that we are subject to the security protocols of the House. So if you are not a pass holder, you will need to be accompanied by a pass holder if you're entering the nonpublic areas of the house. If you need to use the bathroom, can you please approach a pass holder. If you're a pass holder, can we just have a raise of hands? Who has got a pass? So there's quite a few people around the room who can assist you.
I would just like to start off by introducing People with Disability Australia. We're a peak consumer voice for people with disability and we are governed by people with disability. We are a national peak body funded by the federal government Department of Social Services, and we’re also part of the Australian Cross Disability Alliance. I acknowledge Dwayne from NEDA and representatives from Women With Disabilities Australia who are here as well today.
We provide individual, systemic advocacy as well as projects. So what that means for us is that we actually have direct contact with people experiencing and having contact with the justice system on many levels. We do the individual, and we do the systemic. So our advocacy on national issues like the NDIS, for instance, is often informed by what's happening to people on the ground. Today's forum is part of a funded project that provides disability support to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. This project is made up of three elements. It has got advocacy, it has got training and it has systemic advocacy and policy work. I think we've got some brochures and posters and other information just on the side here if you're interested in learning more about the project and the support it provides.
The project is about ensuring that the experiences of people with disability are included in the Royal Commission into Child Abuse. I want to briefly paint you a picture about what we know about child abuse and disability. I think that and I hope that we would all agree that all abuse of children is abhorrent, but I think that there is a special inner circle of hell involved and reserved for those who commit child abuse on people with disability. The people who may not be believed, and who may not even be able to communicate their distress.
What we do know about the prevalence of this kind of abuse is disturbing. Children with disability are over three times more likely to experience abuse than other children. Children with disability are known to be at much higher risk of sexual violence than other children. Over 68% of women with disability experience sexual violence for the first time under the age of 18. It's nearly 70 per cent. That figure, when I first heard it, shocked me and it should be a wakeup call to all of us.
The Royal Commission has found that it takes an average of 22 years for a survivor to disclose sexual abuse experienced as a child. Children and adults with disability may take even longer. Partly because of the kinds of places that they may be living in. Places like institutions lack the kinds of oversight, protection and proximity to the community that give people a better opportunity to discuss. Putting people in institutions never makes us safer; it makes us more vulnerable to harm. It is the Royal Commission to come.
The question we are focusing on today is does the justice system we have in Australia currently provide justice for people with disability affected by child sexual assault. Today's event is divided into three rough sections: criminal legal responses; civil legal responses and a concept called redress. After each speaker we will have about ten minutes for questions.
It's important to recognise that people will disability who experience sexual assault as children may only disclose as adults. This means some of today's speakers will be more generally addressing the experiences of people with disability accessing the justice system, while others will be focusing in more closely on child sexual assault.
We hope that this forum will be useful in your considerations of the barriers to justice faced by people with disability who are survivors of child sexual assault.
We are recording today and we will be making a transcript available on our website after the event if you wish to consult it. The other thing that we should say is these are difficult issues, these are triggering issues for many of us who have been in institutions and exposed to this, including me. So please note if you are distressed at any point by the content, there are a number of counsellors and other support staff who are available to speak to you. So please let Meredith Lea know if you have any of these needs or these issues emerge as we move forward.
The first section of the day, as I mentioned, is focused on the criminal justice responses to victims of crime with disability. This includes responses from police, from prosecutors and within the Court system. We will start with an expert in the area who has done substantial research with people with disability about these matters. Then we will turn to a woman with disability, and a representative from her support service, to give us an account of the lived experience of trying to report these crimes to police.
Wendy Sanderson is the manager, Independent Review, at the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. Wendy has worked on major policy and research projects at the Commission in the areas of gender equality and disability, including Beyond Doubt: the experiences of people with disabilities reporting crime. Wendy is currently leading a major independent review into gender equity in the Victorian police force. Prior to working with the Commission, Wendy coordinated the justicebased implementation of government family violence reforms from 2009 to 2012. Please make Wendy very welcome.
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